Driving Towards a Sustainable Future

Can California’s vehicle requirements help Connecticut achieve climate targets?

Clean cars are essential to meeting Connecticut’s climate commitments. In April, Save the Sound released a study showing that adopting California’s Advanced Clean Cars II Zero-Emissions Vehicle requirements would not only help Connecticut meet its mandate of reducing greenhouse gas emissions—to 45 percent below 2001 levels by 2030, and 80 percent by 2050—but that the policy would also be good for the economy.

The Connecticut Electric Vehicle Policy Impact Study, conducted by international climate change consulting firm EBP, observes that “the absence of the policy would jeopardize achieving Connecticut’s clean air and carbon emission reduction goals and efforts to improve public health.” Moreover, it concludes that the economic and societal benefits of adopting California’s standards are “compelling and significant.”

Among those anticipated benefits:

• $25.7 billion of value added to Connecticut’s GDP

• $40.1 billion increase in net business income

• 128,200 net new job-years in Connecticut

• 137 million metric tons of CO2 emissions avoided, the equivalent of planting 3.5 billion trees

Our own climate and energy attorney, Charles Rothenberger, says: “This report makes it clear that, in addition to the obvious environmental benefits of transitioning to clean vehicles, there are significant economic benefits as well. Given the current and growing impacts of climate change, we know that inaction will be more costly than action. Connecticut should act this year to fully adopt the standards approved by the General Assembly in 2022 to keep our state in a leadership position on clean cars.”